On the Solovetsky archipelago, it is planned to build up extensive for this territory - a monument of history, culture and nature: 1400 hectares of forest are planned to be transferred to the category of settlements and to provide a pilgrimage, and possibly tourist infrastructure. There is reason to fear that capital construction is likely, which will forever change the atmosphere and image of the Solovki. We recently talked about a petition against the adopted general plan. Now - we publish a note by the author of the petition, employee of the Moscow Architectural Institute Nikolai Petrov-Spiridonov. ***
The topic of the "general plan of the Solovki" has not yet been exhausted. First of all, because there are no clear answers from the initiators and executors of the General Plan to the most essential questions. First, who gave the right to the developers and the "Solovki Development Agency" in Arkhangelsk to consider the whole archipelago as a settlement of Solovetskoye? The whole nature, all the unique biogeocenotic combinations of lakes, taiga, forest-tundra, tundra, sea, water area, etc.? All moral value eternal Solovetsky nature for people to equate to the value new households buildings and hotels?
Secondly, on what basis do civilians (chief architect of the region, head of the Solovki Development Agency, and monastic mediators) start crying about: “Oh, how dare you oppose the Church? The monks did it all on Solovki, and you are now preventing them from restoring !!! Unfortunately, this is their answer to all the objective questions of specialists who are exactly the same members of the Church, if they belong to the Orthodox confession. The entire objective content of the questions is ignored by the defense lawyers. Why transfer to the lands of settlements fourteen square kilometers of nature for less than 100 inhabitants of the monastery - this is probably the mystery of the century.
They are trying to justify the latter with a “development perspective”. With the above ratio - several dozen monastics on an area comparable to the area of a small city, the entire prospect for the next 100 years belongs to third parties - developers, investors, builders, intermediaries. Note that in order to professionally work with such a monument as the Solovetsky archipelago, any professional and even a worker must go through at least several years of "Solovetsky educational program" - to bypass the islands, to feel the history and nature - in order to understand where the border of what is permitted in Solovki is. What is typical behavior and even the norm in the modern world - in Solovki there is often ignorance and prey. I am afraid that there will be no educational program for developers and builders. Crowds of the most low-quality and illiterate guest workers will be brought to the islands, they will be declared “restorers” under the leadership of intermediaries-“restorers”, covered in haste or for money with diplomas received.
Unfortunately, we are forced to show in photographs some of the tendencies of modern processes of interaction between restoration and the "market" (which should not exist in principle) in Solovki. Unfortunately - because these are the monuments of our Fatherland and UNESCO. If this is the attitude towards the main objects of the islands, then what will be the fate of the forest quarters, given into the hands of people with a similar ideology?
And one more historical comparison. Even after Catherine's robbery across the states in 1764, the monastery had tremendous potential. Why didn't the monastery build settlements around the island before the revolution? Because at that time, many people understood the word "no". In the depths of the islands - Savvatyevo, Sekiro-Voznesensky skete, a chapel on Rebold, separate houses and households. barns, several chapels. That's it, no hotels for pilgrims. Yes, under St. Philip had salt brewhouses on the shore, and the forest was chopped down - with subsequent restoration, and a large timber from the time of Philip was transported from the mainland so as not to destroy their own. But then the monastery lived on a subsistence economy and had a direct need to cook salt in large quantities. And not to take tourists in cars to the forest and build infrastructure there for this …
Those who advocate the general plan are still cunning. They are told "you cannot introduce a tourist (pilgrimage) structure into nature" - and they answer: "Well, do you really not trust the monks who created everything here?" Or are they cunning like this: they say, the authors of the petition, although to ban tourism in Solovki, is unthinkable, isn't it?
"By their fruits you will know them …". Some of the "fruits" are shown here in the photographs.
Nikolay Alexandrovich
Petrov-Spiridonov, Moscow Architectural Institute
